17 Feb
2020
17 Feb
'20
5:50 a.m.
On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 17:10:03 -0500 Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
On Sun, Feb 16, 2020 at 4:47 PM Wesley Parish <wobblygong(a)gmail.com> wrote:
What brand was your grandfather's sliderule?
I had a yellow Pickett sliderule in my undergrad days. IIRC it
had some sort of aluminum alloy slide and didn't work as
smoothly as an Aristo or a Faber-Castell. A friend had TI
scinetific calculator with RED LED digits -- may have been the
SR50. Aesthetically it didn't hold a candle to the beautfiul
sliderules!
Some sliderule simulators here: https://www.sliderules.org/
(mine looked exactly like the N600)
Online Museum here: https://sliderulemuseum.com/SRM_Home.htm
FWVLIW - I bought a Dover book on slide rule in
the late 70s while at
high school, and shortly after, a real slide rule, and it's stuck with
me.
My dad taught me with a plastic slide rule he put in our stocking in the
early/mid 1960s. This was how I (and many others) learn about
interpolation. I also learned to make log/log paper with it. A few years
later, my grandfather died when I was in engineering school. My grandmother
sent me his slide rule to remember him by (which I still have). Although
she did not know that at the time, I already owned the then hot item, a TI
SR50 scientific calculator - which I paid the $150 in 1972 dollars (about
$900 in today's money). I also got his drafting table, but I no longer
have that. The slide rule is made of ivory on top of metal (I think
bronze but I never had it checked). It was probably made in the 1920s. It
stays in a box in desk ;-) A slightly, sad part is I don't think either of
my kids knows how to use
it, and while both have degrees in science, I don't think either wants it.
So it goes!